In recent years, the use of air purifiers has become more popular in interior spaces such as homes and offices. The increasing use of air purifiers results from the perception that air born dust, allergens, and micro-organisms such as germs and bacteria affect the health of persons breathing the air. Increased use of insulation, improved building construction techniques, and closure devices such as windows and doors with tighter tolerances provides buildings with increased resistance to air infiltration. As a result, fresh exterior air is exchanged or introduced to the building in lower volumes such as through open doors, windows, and air handling systems.
While exchange of interior and exterior air is desirable, such exchanges may be impractical to accomplish. Large office buildings, for example, typically re-circulate interior air while mixing a proportion of fresh air into the air handling system. These exchanges of air however increase cooling and heating costs. Accordingly, while fresh air is desirable, the increased cost to maintain a cool or warm temperature lessens the desirability of the air exchange.
Air purifiers used in interior spaces accordingly address the need for providing fresh air by removing odors, dust, and air born pollutants from the interior air. Conventional air purifiers include a blower that pushes or pulls air through a filter element. There are a number of different commercially available types of filters with differing air permeability and thus different filtering characteristics. These include particulate filters to remove larger particles from the air, electrostatic filters to trap particles sensitive to electrostatic charges, and odor filters to remove odors or to scent the air, such as the use of a conventional odor filter including activated carbon or charcoal that remove pollutants primarily by absorption.
In addition to filters, some air purifiers include additional air purification features. These include the use of UV lights for destroying germs and pathogens carried in the air. Other devices generate positive or negative ions which are introduced into the air stream flowing through the air purifier. The ions emitted into the volume of the room tend to electrostatically cling to pollutants having opposing charges. These attached ions increase the weight of the air born particles and cause the heavier particles to fall to the ground, thereby clearing the air of dust and other pollutants.
While these air purifiers have met a need for increased treatment of interior air, there are drawbacks to their use. Periodically, components of the air purifiers need to be replaced. The housings that contain the components however are not readily accessible for replacement and/or cleaning of the components. Further, some devices useful for air purification have not readily been used due to the sophisticated controls necessary to assure proper operation.
Accordingly, a need remains in the art for an air purifier which provides enhanced air purification features while detection sensors monitor and control the operation of the air purifier. It is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.